Blog

With the prices of crypto-currencies quickly rising out of everyone’s reach, one of the more common questions being asked is: “Are we in a bubble?”

What this metaphor is really asking for is a risk assessment regarding price stability and the likelihood that our potential investment may see a price collapse that leaves us somewhat poorer and less hopeful about the future

to discuss the subject in a language less informal than that of bursting bubbles, let’s define the condition in question as an over-exertion of the market. markets have buyers and sellers, the numbers of which wax and wane, and as the ratio of these two classes of participants changes, it causes prices to rise and fall, like the tides. generally, as demand for a commodity rises, it stretches the supply causing price hikes and and attendant enthusiasm from those long the position (those who own the commodity). at some point prices are sufficiently high (a point of over-exertion) that demand starts to loosen and prices fall, finding the other end of the pendulum, only to rise again

however, to assess whether market is over-exerted one cannot merely look at the price of an asset e.g. a single share of Berkshire Hathaway is quoted presently at $249,610 yet no one would point to it and claim it’s ready to burst. similarly, a rapid rise in the price of an asset is also not sufficient to classify a market as being in a bubble — consider that Monster (the beverage) saw a 11,731% gain since it’s IPO (as of Aug. 2016) but has found stability, and was thus never a bubble

a “bubble” therefore is a condition of instability. anyone looking at Monster’s scandalous ascent may have concluded it would soon burst, but they would have been wrong. the asset did not collapse in price, nor will it do so at this point

to answer the question of price stability we must turn to the fundamentals of the particular market, in this case, the nature of crypto-currencies, their structure and potential

the single, most important fact to comprehend about Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dash or any of the nearly 2,000 “alt-coins” in existence today is that their supply is limited i.e. the amount of currency available for purchase is finite

this differs substantially from sovereign currencies (those issued by governments, like the Euro or US dollar) whose aggregate monetary supply (i.e. the total number of dollars in existence) is a factor of credit. the signifcance of the previous statement can be expressed as two characteristics of these currencies: 1) nobody, not even the Federal Reserve (who issues US dollars) knows how many dollars exist, and 2) anyone can create a dollar

whilst the last statement may seem shocking to most, consider that any person who deposits $100 in a bank account, through the magic of fractional banking, has just manufactured roughly $1,000 or that the credit cards in your pocket represent a promise to pay which is monetised by banks into actual dollars — as are mortgages, promissory notes, bonds, or any other promise to pay

crypto-currencies are thus a new breed of animal and, of principal interest, one designed to maintain (or increase) the value of the holder, that is to say, they are deflationary. to any reasonable human being, a comparison between these two types of currency yields the simple conclusion that keeping the fruits of one’s labour in fiat represents financial ruin vis-à-vis the potential for a comfortable retirement, a chance to live it up for once, and an inheritance for our children

a secondary fact of consequence to contemplate, in answering the question of the bubble, is that crypto currencies provide a degree of service not currently available by sovereign currencies e.g. security, concealment, ease of transmission and control

security is of paramount importance where wealth is concerned. we work hard for our pennies and therefore keeping them safe from the many hands that would take them by force is a consideration as old as money itself. by its very nature, crypto-currencies defy theft, confiscation, taxation (another form of theft) or devaluation

additionally, as human beings we have an innate sense of what’s “our own business” — the notion that what we do is our affair and no one else’s. in today’s modern world our privacy is tresspassed upon in every way by greedy and controlling governments and corporations that do not serve our interests, and whilst crypto cannot protect one from cameras and NSA snooping, it can protect our identity and the particulars of our transactions

of course, it is also possible to compare crypto-currencies with sovereign money in terms of their transmission capabilities. send money to your parents, it’s 3 banking days; if they live abroad, it’s 10 days or more. and there are fees (everyone takes a cut of your money). and there are limits, and regulations, and snags and misunderstandings, and questions about “our” business. with crypto, on the other hand, a transmissions takes a fraction of a second and is effected for any amount. no rules, no questions asked

and finally, crypto we control. we like control, because we can trust ourselves. across time we have learnt that any time we trust someone else we become vulnerable, and that others put their own interests ahead of ours. do you trust your bank? your government? have you seen what these institutions do? to you? to others? with crypto you have only to ask yourself: do you trust yourself with your own money?

in summary, from a service perspective, crypto currencies are also clearly superiour to fiat, and this creates ancillary demand for that type of asset

as a final third factor in the analysis of fundamentals, consider that each currency offering represents thousands of man-hours of effort. these currencies represent solutions to difficult problems arrived at by brilliant minds whose sole aim is to make life better for everyone

what problems and solutions? take one currency as an example: Ethereum. This is a platform born of the recognition that whilst bitcoin is a state machine capable of managing transitions of a numerical value, that transitions of all kinds can be managed by a blockchain i.e. ethereum is a generalisation of bitcoin that allows others to build distributed applications to solve real-world problems. the market for ether thus comprises not only people and organisations, but also applications i.e. ETH serves as the fuel that runs applications within the world computer that is ethereum

or take Dash, an incarnation of a DAO (a decentralised, autonomous organisation). a DAO is like a company but is not incorporated in any jurisdiction (has no legal existence), has no board of directors, no CEO and no staff, only shareholders. to paraphrase, there is no old-boys network of directors to fleece shareholders, compensating their CEOs with outrageous salaries, bonuses, and golden parachutes. no fancy jets or million-dollar birthday parties at the expense of dividends. DAO investors use their tokens to finance projects, the proceeds of which then compensate shareholders directly, without the panoply of parasites traditional of corporations. is there value in this new modality of business? does Dash not represent a more democratic, fair and desirable way for capital and labour to meet? you bet it does

and as we continue down the long list alt-coins, each one of them represents a different set of aims and choices: coins for raising charity funds, coins where the economic model consists of manufacturing liquidity just-in-time and value can’t be stored (i.e. wealth accumulation is impossible), coins issued to pay for specific services, such as with Storj

so given the analysis above, perhaps we can now answer the question of whether at present the crypto markets are in a bubble

what maketh a price is the balance of supply and demand. in the case of crypto, supply is fixed but demand is clearly buoyed by an increasing awareness of a planetary magnitude, by an entusiasm for the discovery, innovation and potential these represent, to change the world we live in, by the growing recognition that our institutions have failed us, but that we have an alternative

there will be price corrections. it is natural of any market, but the party’s just getting started. how much higher can prices reach? where will these markets find balance, stability?

I run a bitcoin ticker on my Mac to keep me apprised of the ever-changing price of bitcoin on a second-by-second basis. Today it reads $1,591 — the value of a single coin on the Kraken exchange (on Coinbase it’s $1,633 (arbitrage anyone?)), as you can see in the picture above

With a market capitalisation of $26B (see CoinMarketCap), however, BTC remains Liliputian vis-à-vis the sums invested in other asset classes. If compared to gold (market cap: $8.48T) bitcoin represents a tiny 0.3%, and gold itself is considered a tiny market with relation to equities ($69T), debt ($230T) or derivatives ($1,200T) — not to even mention the gargantuan f/x markets

The consensus for establishing market cap is that the last trade’s price forms one of two factors in the calculation, total supply being the second. Regardless of whether that makes sense (in my view just because one coin is valued at a given level doesn’t imply all coins are — try selling all the coins in existence and see what happens to price), bitcoin is unique in one respect: the constraint of its supply. In fact, the same argument could be (and generally is) made of gold but in practice the price of gold does not represent physical gold (which is constrained in supply) but that of the nearest futures contract (which is not). This matters because with a finite supply, increased demand can only be satisfied via a rise in price

As I watch bitcoin’s nearly vertical progression, I cannot help but wonder: where is the threshold at which the computation on the street transforms from ”the price of bitcoin is rising, I should get in” to ”the price of dollars is collapsing, I should get out”? The difference being that whilst the former represents merely an act of speculation, the latter signifies an exodus of capital from the banking system as a protectionary measure from financial ruin

Where is the threshold? where is that point at which a sane human being can only ignore bitcoin at their own peril? does the computation change at $5,000/coin? what about at $50K or $1M? because at some point it becomes patently and excruciatingly obvious that not liquidating all of one’s positions, retirement accounts — basically one’s entire net worth — and placing the lot of it in bitcoin is tantamount to financial ruin

And when that conclusion is reached, what happens to the world we live in? a world without central banking and the ruinous path the ruling élite has chosen for the 99% of us by way of its monetary controls?

My guess is that the élite is finished. They are unable to place their wealth in bitcoin without causing the very demise of the financial system they currently control, and they are equally unable to prevent the 99% of us from doing so — the final outcome of which is that we are about to witness the greatest transfer of wealth in the history of humanity, with the corollary that as their fiat currencies devalue to nothing, the 99% become rich, creating the hyper-wealth imagined in certain academic circles

As a person becomes rich, he is able to make more decisions, to exert his will on the course of events in the world he inhabits. His decisions are, of course, to his own benefit, but by having a greater number of decision makers in the pool, better decisions can be reached i.e. individual greed is evened out to produce the benefit of the commons, which is of course, the lesson bitcoin teaches and that is already embedded in the proof-of-work solution to the Byzantine Generals’ problem that Satoshi Nakamoto (whoever he is, thank you for this breathtaking gift to the world) solved

Our societies have been a great experiment, primarily one of representative democracies as the ensuing organisational structure after the monarchy. As such their apogee has passed and is slowly yielding to other more egalitarian forms of democracy, closer to the Platonic vision of Classical Greece where the nation state fades away to make room for meritocracies

Already we are witnessing the construction of distributed autonomous organisations, prediction markets and other forms of decentralised decision-making and collective knowledge structures, the predecessors of mechanisms that will reshape our civilisation in this 21st century anno domini

To conclude, bitcoin is a harbinger. If you have ears, what you’ll hear are the tidings of our finis mundi — the end of the world as we know it. Not the TEOTWAWKI of the survivalist preppers, who stock food and ammunition in expectation of a Mad Max scenario, but quite the opposite, the end of oppression by the few, the liberation of the human mind to solve the problems already within reach, that the élite prohibits

maybe the issue is we have different ideas of what a hug is. often the ground for conflict is based on differences in our understanding of words and if so, resolution may happen by coming to terms with your terminology.

to prove my point I thus looked up the word for her. here’s what my dictionary states:

hug [huhg] verb (used with object), hugged, hugging

to clasp tightly in the arms, especially with affection; embrace

to my surprise she pointed gleefully: ”see? you didn’t give me a hug, you only used one arm”

seriously? I need two arms to give a proper hug? is the plural arms in the definition categorical or merely exemplary? do I really want to argue this?

I thought I gave her a hug… I held her tightly. with one arm. and to me that was a hug and the dictionary be damned

but winning an argument with a woman is never useful and at the core I did understand the issue. the word-book says especially with affection. a hug can be without affection

that morning I gave her a hug because she asked for it, but it wasn’t with feeling. I was busy writing, thinking, working and her request for a hug was interrupting my flow. so I merely obliged. and she felt that. that lack of feeling.

it was that emotional absence that bothered her. she wanted connection, and I was busy

but affection cannot be commanded, manufactured on the spot to suit the need of another. affection is a liquid that gets squeezed upwards into the heart in Artesian fashion by internal pressures we know little of… it’s something that lifts the bearer, not something intended as a present for the beloved

I gave her a hug but it was obsequious, a gesture of compliance because if I denied her the hug she’d accuse me of denying her hugs for the rest of forever — a charge easily computed to carry too high a cost, within my cost assessment structure

but it didn’t work. it didn’t placate her basic need, which is my whole point of being here. if a lover cannot satisfy the beloved’s need for love, then what’s the point of being there?

that’s what she asks all the time. why be here if there is no feeling?

I hate feelings. they’re such unruly, counter-productive, exasperating forces — and I’ve extirpated them from my life. in that respect I’m in a small minority. to most, emotion is the élan vital of life, the factory of meaning that gives one’s path in life a destination

I have no destination. I’m going nowhere. and I don’t give a shit

but she does, and she minds that I don’t

so perhaps I shouldn’t be in a relationship… it’s what she tells me off and on, echoing the sentiments of past lovers, and perhaps she’s right. but it’s not a choice, no more than anything else is. she showed up in my life. could I have said, no? of course not, that’s ridiculous, not any more than I could say no to getting up in the morning, eating or reading about Ethereum

we don’t have choices in life. it’s a modern myth that we do. but my matriculation in this school of thought places me in yet another tiny minority, and frankly, one that doesn’t help my relationship

I like my relationship. it is a platform that has allowed my evolution in certain directions I deem positive… towards greater balance, perhaps. towards maturity, compassion. towards a greater sense of humanity

our relationship has allowed me to become less machine-like, less isolated, less desolate… and I’m happy with it

but if I make her unhappy?

not all relationships work out — a fact I’ve learned at great cost. and the prevailing zeitgeist says it’s better to cut your losses and get out than to waste your time. better to move on. move onto others, with other problems

I have never subscribed to the American notion of equality — that all men are created equal — which philosophically owes its genesis to that unholy trinity of ideals born in the French Revolution i.e. égalité, liberté et fraternité

to any reasonable observer, the idea is clearly nonsense

neither are we physically equal, nor are we intellectually, emotionally or spiritually the same. in fact, nature seems to have gone to extreme lengths to create such diversity that not even the components we’re built from are equal. yes, we each have a mouth, a nose, two ears and ten toes but no two noses are the same and even our toes differ from each other

these days geneticists make the argument that any two people on the planet differ on the average by only 1 base-pair in a thousand, which means we’re very close. 99.9% close. but close is not equal — these tiny variations make for the difference between a man who gets to live to 90 years of age and one who dies of heart disease at 30, between the man who plays basketball and the one who plays soccer, between men and women

so close is not not even close to equal

and no matter how much we explain away such differences and seek to reconcile our divergent statuses or condition by way of law, good will, or the ideologies of divine union, the fact remains that when we look at another human being, we see that they are not like us; more or less so, depending on who we look at and what we’re predisposed to, but all the same, the distance is undeniable

and yet, as much as I have always defended my disagreement with the American zeitgeist, from one perspective I always felt we are equal: we each get a brain of equal capacity i.e. the capability to rewire itself to suit its environment. for me, the one area where I never questioned equality was in the potential each human being holds. the potential to reason, to become, to observe the world, identify problems, propose solutions, design tests to prove an hypothesis and contribute to the betterment of the species

granted, the problem and solution spaces where we all play in are different as a function of our exposure to experience, but that doesn’t matter because the collective effort constitutes the potential that humanity harbours for progress and no parity is reasonably meaningful in terms of the contribution

however, I’m starting to suspect I may be wrong

to anyone looking it’s clear that we’re not all equal in potential, but we attribute these inequalities to social factors: unequal access to education, racial prejudices that close doors to some from participation in a given sphere of human activity, wealth inequality, familial disintegration, drug addiction, etc.

and we take heart because such grievances may find redress in the restructuring of our social institutions, in the remediation of our caste systems, in our efforts to create and promote a ”greater” consciousness, perhaps delineated along the lines of the Buddhist ideal of compassion

so we comfort ourselves that there is hope yet, for a world where all men are equal in their potential to contribute to the great experiment of humanity in which we all partake

from a personal perspective I have witnessed the struggles of others whose broken lives prevented them from ever realizing their great potential, or at least the potential that I espied in them. a potential unrealised because they were too busy, too stressed earning a living, because decades after a great loss or tragedy they still struggled emotionally to move on, because in their loneliness they wasted years of their lives getting fat and watching the telly, or lived escaping their lives playing video games or taking drugs… because they could have walked if only their feet hadn’t been tangled in the structural issues of our societies

and if we can clearly allocate the loss of potential to a given structural profile, it’s easy to presume one can help. I presumed I could help — by removing obstacles from the path of others, by cutting off the tendrils of belief structures that so tightly wrap themselves around their hearts and minds, fastening them to the life of slow decay to which Pink Floyd refers

it’s not an easy process, helping a person; rather a bit like the performance tuning work we do for database engines wherein resolving one bottleneck merely creates the conditions needed to discover another. but the investment is at least made into a process that’s well understood and known to work, and at the end of the day, though the total cost may have proven to be greater than that originally imagined, there’s still the hope that one will end up with a fully functional and well-behaved system. right?

not quite

with human beings there’s another factor we must consider: light. more specifically, the quality of energy we each possess upon our first arrival on the planet, which in some cultures is attributed to the recent connection with divinity. across time the brilliance of this energy seems to fade. it dies, as Anaïs Nin once said of love, ”of blindness and errors and betrayals. it dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings”, and with it, the potential of the individual. with the dying of the light dies the organism itself, and the promise it held, of becoming, overcoming

it therefore follows that an individual’s actual potential is directly related to the amount of light, life, will, left in him/her at any point and that realistically, all entrapments aside, we are not equal in potential

in fact, even discounting the light factor, there are complex structures in our brains that prohibit certain outcomes whilst favouring others, and these outcomes vary from individual to individual. thus the vulgar notion that some people just cannot do math, may be valid

I always believed (to the extent that I allow myself to believe anything), that if my brain could do math (btw, I suck at it) then anyone else could do it, for all brains hold equal potential

but what if I’m wrong?

what if it’s not possible to help another because they simple don’t have what it takes? is our only choice then, to discard human beings as damaged goods after our performance tuning efforts fail? to move onto others with greater potential, perhaps catching them earlier in life before the vines of our cultures bind too tightly and fasten their legs to skepticism, indolence, resignation and inevitable apathy?

Adolph Hitler once said: ”He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future” („Er allein, der die Jugend besitzt, gewinnt die Zukunft“), and though the meaning of his assertion is plain enough, it does hint at the previous conclusion that if we are to make a better world, the low hanging fruit is the children, for there is less damage to contend with, weaker bindings to the ideologies that have entrapped us, and brighter energy to work with

On the Indonesian island of Bali, the autochthonous populations contend that the first three months of a child’s life are sacred on account of the lingering connection to Heaven, whence babies come. Thus during this time the baby is not allowed to touch the ground but instead gets cuddled and held in everyone’s arms — the mother’s, the father’s, their siblings’ and those of their uncles, and grandparents. For three months the child is embraced by the entire village.

This first trimester of life is meant to provide the small angel with a gentle transition to its life on Earth and its end is celebrated by the Balinese with a ceremony called ”Nyabutan”

In my view the world needs to love and protect its children better. to comprehend the extent to which our care for children matters in the context of our survival as a species

and we must tread carefully, for a conclusion that not all men are equal in their potential is an indictment that some individuals are superior in value to others, which easily leads to the policies of the eugenics movement of the 1920s. in our enthusiasm to improve our chances for survival we may come to device metrics for measuring potential and to direct our efforts towards the darkness of extermination that we sadly know so well already

In Egyptian history it is recorded slaves were used for agricultural labour. The Phoenicians traded them. The Greeks, Hittites, Persians and Mongols all enslaved other cultures, as did the Romans later, and during the Dark Ages the term of choice was ”serfdom”.

But we repudiate the notion of slavery.

Dating to the 3rd century BC, evidence of discontent with this heinous practice may be seen in the abolishment by Ashoka of the slave trade in the Mauryan Empire, which at the time covered most of India. Similar efforts are later seen in China (200 BC), Ireland (500 AD) and Venice (960 AD), with the eventual, complete ban on slavery in Iceland (1117), Sweden (1334) and both Lithuania and Japan in the 16th century. Portugal, a full century before the ratification of the US’ 13th amendment, frees its slaves on the mainland, as well as in its possessions in India, with the rest of the European continent and the Ottoman Empire to follow. Mexico, Serbia, Cuba, Uruguay, Canada and many other nations all precede the US in the abolishment of slavery.

Yet, we still have slaves.

According to the 2012 UN report on human trafficking, an estimated 15 million women and children are kept in captivity today mostly serving to satisfy, with their dignity, the lascivious desires of their owners, with another 7 million used for hard labour. In the US alone, 7 million (BJS 2013) are managed by the American penitentiary system, whose captivity serves to maintain the enormously profitable incarceration arm of what Eisenhower once called the ”military-industrial complex”. And to no lesser an extent, the billions of taxpayers in the world are all slaves.

Freedom for all?

The architect Frank Lloyd Wright once remarked that unless all individuals in a society are free, their government is merely an expediency of enslavement.

In the American culture, which has so made a fuss over the idea of freedom that it’s recognised the world over for it, liberty is founded on consent. The American Declaration of Independence, makes the curious proposal that governments instituted amongst men derive their power from the consent of the governed. This notion was carried through to the crafting of the Constitution, whose preamble states it was ordained to: ”secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity”

The average, tax-paying American will tell you he’s free. But how can a man call himself free when he pays taxes, which by definition are an imposition, a contribution exacted from him against his will by the threat of violence?

Isn’t the very definition of slavery the subjugation of a man’s will through the threat of force or violence? and if so, isn’t the IRS, as Lloyd Wright suggested, merely the apparatus for the enslavement of Americans, and therefore unconstitutional?

Indeed it would be, if income tax were compulsory… but Congress has gone to extreme lengths to make sure the 16th amendment codifies a system of voluntary taxation i.e. Americans may have been fooled into thinking they must pay the tax, that somehow it’s legal for their freedom to be abridged in this egregious manner, but it’s not. They are indeed free (constitutionally speaking) and thus not obliged to pay the IRS (the specific legal argumentation, obviously, would have to be made as a separate exercise).

There is great discontent today with the out-of-control machine that government in America has become. A machine that, as is more obvious every day to a greater number of Americans, is hell-bent on ruining the once great nation.

A machine that exports jobs, leaving Americans dependent on food stamps, that pilfers their pockets at the federal, state and local levels and uses the funds to finance increasingly militarised police forces that can kill Americans with impunity, as well as armies that invade other nations creating disastrous outcomes for their citizens and a chilling backlash where once there was good will, a machine that serves itself with the big spoon, at the expense of those it purports to serve.

Things are not well, and given the observable course, they can only get worse. Whilst Americans bicker over partisan issues of gay rights, support for Israel and offshore phracking, the national debate is missing the topic most singly important to the well being of the society: that what keeps the engine running are the funds foolishly surrendered by Americans under the misconception that they have no choice.

Empirically, it is clear that Americans no longer believe their vote matters, that the choices of candidates are such that picking one over the other makes no difference. What isn’t clear is that their choice is twofold: they can vote at the ballot, or with their dollars.

As economic conditions continue to deteriorate, this is a question that the American authority will seek to avoid at all costs, for withdrawing support from the machine is equivalent to putting an end to the current power structure.

Given the current situation, it may be too late to demand redress for our grievances, but at least let no one cry that they never had a choice. The choice is available to anyone: withdraw from the system, from the banking system, stop filing tax returns (please note I’m not advocating any crime here, it is possible to stop filing legally) and financially supporting the monster that is causing so much suffering in the world, or stand responsible for your own undoing.